Most agriculturalist and farmers worldwide are increasingly adopting seed treatments, mainly to ensure full germination of seeds and enable effective disease prevention in the fields.
There are numerous benefits to seed treatments: providing protection during the developmental stages, strengthening the plants as they grow, encouraging full germination; and helping in warding off the early onset of insects and various fungal diseases to the crop caused. Advancement in agricultural technology and researches on evaluation of different seed treatments have made these more environmental friendly. In addition, various bio-based seed treatments results in greatly reducing the volume of chemicals used as insecticides and fungicides.
Most, but not all seeds, need seed treatment methods, due to being fungal prone and vulnerable to insects like wireworms, seedcorn beetles and maggots. These heavily retard the germination process by infesting the seedlings and seedling plants, and causes nitrogen loss or significant depletion of nourishing soil nutrients.
For quite some time, fungal diseases have affected cultivation across major regions in the U.S., since the crop is highly susceptible to seed rot ant pre-emergence damping mainly caused by various species of soil-borne fungi such as Pythium species and Rhizoctonia solani, and other pathogens, mainly including Pythium species. These fungi and pathogens are active during cool, wet conditions, and increasingly affect the sugarbeet crops. Prevalence and severity of these seedling diseases affecting the produce of sugarbeet have led many major chemical producers various high-end seed treatment fungicide to help producers increase their stands and yields. Recently this year, BASF, a global chemical major, has won approval by the leading Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for its seed treatment fungicide, Systiva® XS. The seed treatment Systiva XS considered by the chemical manufacturer to be the next-generation fungicide, is helpful to U.S. sugar beet growers by effectively controlling a range of soil-borne diseases in their crops. The most common and destructive fungal pathogens, Rhizoctonia, which can cause significant loss amounting 30-60 % of the yield, mainly through root rot, which can affect the entire filed yield. The effectiveness of the Seed Treatment has already been validated in various field studies conducted during the years 2014 & 2015.
Another multinational agricultural company based in Switzerland, Syngenta AG, has recently introduced Vibrance® seed treatment fungicide which help sugarbeet growers to prevent the crop infected by the same diseases, thereby considerably enhancing the crop yield. As claimed by the chemical producer, Vibrance has the active ingredient sedaxane and is compatible with various other seed treatment products used to increase the standability of sugarbeet seedling and augment crop yield.
According to Mark Schmidt, VP, Sales & Marketing, Betaseed, “The performance of Systiva XS seed treatment fungicide in commercial fields will give growers long-lasting control throughout the life cycle of the crop, based on our three years of trials.”
Other crops such as Canola and pulse crops also require proper protection in the fields against fungicide. The latest additions to the fungicide line-up for canola and pulses offered by BASF are INSURE® PULSE seed treatment and LANCE® AG fungicide, two new AgCelence® products. The products are claimed to provide control for a broad spectrum of diseases along with offering unique benefits to growers including better yield management in the fields.
As per a recently published report by Allied Market Research titled “World Seed Treatment Market - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014 – 2021”, the world seed treatment market would reach $7.8 billion by 2021, registering a CAGR of 8.3% during the 2015–2021 forecast period. Burgeoning global food requirement requiring increasing the yield in each crop cycle has fostered the market growth across regions. Furthermore, increasing prices of genetically modified (GM) seed have boosted the need for crop protection to manage the risk on investment, resulting in the growth of seed treatment market.
